For days the Guardians laid siege to the Seaver home. Rudy Seaver, in the midst of his paranoia about government control, had gathered a stockpile of food, water, and ammunition. He could last for weeks if the Guardians didn’t make a move, and within days a small army of reporters camped beside the Guardians.
Then one day, people heard Guardians shouting, “Incoming! Incoming!” and many ducked for cover. A group of Guardian snipers fired on the home. Rudy Seaver’s child was shot and killed in that volley. His wife was struck in the head. She laid in a corner of the cabin, screaming for days before she died. Eventually Seaver ran from his home, firing blindly. Wodan saw blurred photographs of the man, face contorted like a monster. He was blasted from all around, dead before he hit the ground.
Later it was found that a Guardian Colonel, Tristema Brown of the Third Force Guardians, had given an order to the sniper squad - to fire at anyone who showed so much as an eyeball through the blinds of the window. A Guardian sniper had seen someone in a window and alerted his teammates. Their bullets had killed Mrs. Seaver and her child. In all the confusion, other Guardians, who believed they were being fired upon, also fired on the perceived threat. The truth was not known until well after Rudy Seaver was dead.
When this information was leaked to the press, Colonel Tristema Brown, despite his defense that he was trying to bring the matter to a just and timely conclusion, was stripped of his rank and forced into early retirement.
Wodan stared at an image of the fallen Guardian. Who stripped him of his rank? he wondered. The documentary didn’t say. Before the segment ended, there was a shot of Rudy Seaver lying in a heap, gun in hand. While Wodan felt sorry for the poor bastard, another thought tickled at the back of his mind: Didn’t the downfall of Colonel Brown prove that, overall, the government had tried to act justly in the matter?
Now there were shots of a large wooden compound on a clear field. A voice with a laborer’s accent read some verse from the Holy Series about the end of the world. The man with the pony tail who stood beside the television spoke over it, and said, “Now, check this here part out, boys. This is the real stuff.”
Under the spiritual leadership of a man named Cyrus Jebediah, a group of families gathered beyond the Reaches on the northern coast. They built a home there, and studied Cyrus’s interpretations of the Holy Series. He believed that the visions of doom included in the apocalyptic chapters of the Series would happen within his lifetime, and so his people prepared themselves for the coming of their Lord. To that end they gathered great stores of food, water, medical supplies - and guns, so that they could defend themselves from the agents of the devil when they made war on the Lord’s chosen few.
Information made its way to Guardian ears: The followers of the Jebediah Branch are stockpiling weapons. They are religious nuts who believe the world is going to end. That is a bad combination. A Guardian unit with authority to search the compound was turned away, peacefully but firmly. The next day, the compound was surrounded by Guardians armed for war.
“These Guardians were Third Force,” said the narrator. “Members of a unit trained to handle the flow of illegal firearms and drugs.” There were shots of white-armored troops sitting on tanks, leaning on machineguns, and shouting into loudspeakers. Helicopters circled the compound. The siege stretched on.
Reporters gathered on the scene, even more than at the Seaver home, perhaps drawn by the promise of blood after the Seaver incident. They camped alongside the Guardians, and even played cards with one another. They rode with Guardian aerial units and shot footage of the compound from above. An audio communications link was established with the Jebedians, for they were online, and even had their own electronic site.
Reporter: Why won’t you just let the Guardians inspect your compound?
Cyrus Jebediah: Because we shouldn’t have to let them in. They’re there to protect the people, okay? And we just want to be away from all that, okay, that whole mentality. We want to study in peace, do our business in peace...
Reporter: And that business includes stockpiling weapons?
Cyrus Jebediah: There’s that word, stockpiling! You could say any gun dealer “stockpiles” guns. Hell, man, any grocer “stockpiles” foodstuffs. We buy ’em and sell ’em and man, that’s just our major cash crop, okay? And we pay our taxes like any grocer, we render unto Caesar like we’re supposed to, and we just want to be left alone, okay?
On the eighth day of the siege, a Guardian climbed atop a tank and said into a loudspeaker, “Cyrus Jebediah, we are coming in!” Camera crews set up shop as Guardian infantrymen rushed the compound. Armored men climbed onto the rooftops while others with battering rams rushed the doors. Wodan watched in fascination as windows were broken with rifle butts, then flash-bangs were thrown in, blasting like little stars of disorientation.
Cyrus Jebediah: What the hell are they doing out there?!
Reporter: Th-they’re... Cyrus, they’re coming in now!
Cyrus Jebediah (voice pitched high): You talk to ’em! Get ’em to stop! Before we have to! There’s... hell, man, we got kids in here!
No one knew who shot first after the flash-bangs were thrown, but the Jebedians fought against the Guardians. Wodan saw a soldier on a sloping roof near a second-story window. He angled his rifle inside, then fired. The windowsill and roof chipped violently as someone returned fire; the Guardian fell backwards and rolled away. A soldier covered him while another leaned under the window, awkwardly hung his rifle over the windowsill, and emptied his clip within.
I can’t believe this happened in Haven, thought Wodan. Where the hell was I when this was going on? All he remembered in the news was something about a group of crazies gathering guns in some remote area, and that they fought with Guardians. He had no idea they had been... human.
The battle went badly for the Guardians. Some died, some were injured. No Jebedians were killed, though some, including Cyrus himself, had been shot. An order went out, and the Guardians withdrew.
The nature of the siege changed after that mishap. Guardian Main Force units came to assist the Thirds at the siege. Some said they came to clean up the mess the Thirds had made. Wodan saw images of a short, powerfully-built Guardian in a fine, white suit full of medals. He was blond-headed, sallow-skinned, and barked orders at Guardians who scurried around him. Wodan recoiled as a name flashed on the screen:
Shem Udo, Secundus of the Guard, Head of the Third Force Guardians
Wodan remembered the man from the dinner party hanging about Prime Minister Vachs, nodding and ignoring him. Now, to see him shouting orders, to see him in charge of a group that had fired at men, women, children – citizens of Haven - filled him with burning revulsion.
But the next shot surprised him. Among a cluster of Guardians sitting in the shade of a tank, he saw a Guardian sitting cross-legged, his legs armored in white, his upper body stripped down to a woolen undershirt that bulged against massive muscles. One powerful arm held a rifle vertically, its butt on the ground. His skin was dark, his hair was wild and red, but shorter than when Wodan had met him in person. The man’s face was hard and focused, intent to the point that it seemed he meditated on death, hatred, and all things black and evil. Wodan recognized him before his name flashed on the screen:
Lieutenant Yarek Clash, Commander of RX9 Rangers, Main Force Guardians
Son of Sevrik Clash, Head of Guard of Haven
What kind of man is he? thought Wodan, his heart racing. And where was Sevrik during all of this?
The Guardians were pissed. There were shots of troops aiming down the sights of their rifles at the compound. A flag that flew on the grounds, white with a yellow cross-and-circle and golden crown, was pulled down and burned. A dog wandering the compound was shot in the middle of the night; no one knew who did it. Psychological warfare was begun in earnest. Every night, giant spotlights glared at the compound, and huge speakers blasted trite pop music and the tortured screams of animals being slaughtered. Family members of those
living on the compound were allowed to visit one day. A mother was interviewed for the documentary. She said, “It was terrible in there, but they was holding up. As I was leaving, I was getting looks from all the Guardians. Like I was some kinda traitor. And I heard one, as I was leaving, an’ I swear, he said, ‘Hope they said their goodbyes.’ And they was just laughing.”
A young girl who left the compound years before spoke before a Senate committee concerning the Jebediah Branch, which was now referred to as the Jebediah Cult. She said Cyrus had pressured her to have sex with him, and had done this to other girls in the cult. She was sixteen, legally still a child. Cyrus was called a rapist and a pedophile, which Wodan remembered pretty well, as it had been in the news alongside tales of the cult’s general weirdness.
In a grainy video, Cyrus sat on a mat with other men and women. His side was bandaged. He had lean, cut features, and long, curly brown hair and thick glasses. He spoke, and often put his arm around a young woman near him. Cyrus removed his bandage and showed the hole that the bullet had put in his side. His was visibly tired, but smiled despite it.
A reporter behind the camera said, “What about the charge that you lead a cult, Cyrus?”
Cyrus smiled, shook his head, said, “The Redeemer himself started a “cult,” and it might’ve looked funny to the people at the time. Well, I guess it must have, ’cause they killed him. Just like there’s people trying to kill me and my people. So what if we look funny to the majority of people? Well, our Lord, he was set to die for his beliefs. Reckon we are, too. I just thought the demons that were going to attack us was going to have horns and fangs. Prophecy’s funny that way!” He laughed.
Summer raged. The heat became stifling, the air deathly dry and windy. A strange order went out: The majority of Guardian units were to pull out, and all media personnel were to pull out with them. The order was sudden, without precedent, and there was no time to argue effectively. One team of reporters was allowed to remain with an aerial unit, and they documented the end of the siege.
A small force of Guardian tanks and infantry charged the compound. While the helicopter rose too far to make out the specifics, they could see that the compound was on fire. The Guardians had little chance to attack, for the Jebedians, seeking the culmination of their end of the world prophecies, had set fire to their home, thus fulfilling the apocalyptic words of Cyrus. Haven breathed a sigh of relief, for the crazies were dead.
But there was one bit of uncontrolled data, amazing because of the fact that it was largely ignored. One of the cameramen aboard the Guardian helicopter had thought to bring a camera that recorded heat signatures, rather than one that only recorded light visible to the human eye. What that camera recorded was horrifying. A tank outfitted with a flamethrower, upwind of the compound, rammed a wall, knocked it down, then torched the building. The tank barely had time to back out before the fire, pushed on by the dry wind, consumed the building. Worse still, Guardian infantrymen, covered by tanks, surrounded a concrete section of the compound. Footage clearly showed muzzle flashes from dozens of rifles, over and over, flashing, killing.
The footage was circulated. It was quickly rebutted: The so-called muzzle flashes were reflections of sunlight glinting off the arms and armor of the Guardians. And the fact that this particular video was sensitive only to heat rather than light - proof that there were guns firing into the building - was somehow not enough to convince the majority of the populace that many of its citizens had been murdered by their own Guardians. The media had already reported that the Jebedians were crazy, then moved on to something else. But the facts of the video, as shown in the documentary, were that the Jebedians had fled into the concrete bunker to avoid the fire, and there a hundred thousand bullets had torn through, from all sides, and had slaughtered them all, man, woman, and child. No Guardian commander took any sort of fall, though the massacre was far more outrageous, far more wicked, than the Seaver incident.
While the documentary went into more detail on the massacre, Wodan felt as if the volume was slowly turning down. Now his exile seemed far less outrageous. As dreadful as the thought was to him, perhaps it was just business as usual. The business of statecraft. The business of erasing reality. The business of murder.
Wodan felt trapped in the dark room, mind spinning out of control. He saw Aegis Vachs at the dinner party, yellow face wrinkled and monstrous, whispering to Shem Udo. “If Wodan Kyner passes his University exams, it could bring my administration down! I want him dead!” He saw Shem Udo standing before Sevrik Clash, who said, “Wodan Kyner? Dead? Sounds like a plan to me. But we can’t just shoot him, that would never work. Let’s have some Guardians dump him off in the middle of nowhere.”
Wodan choked down vomit as his stomach lurched violently. Before he knew it he was through the curtain, running through the store, then stumbling across the street. The crowd was still there, chanting, mumbling, screaming, the press of them terrible, hot. Wodan pushed through them. Someone shouted behind him, indecipherable from the roar.
Wodan continued on, breathing deep to keep from passing out. He heard the voice of a young man shouting, “Kyner! Kyner!” Wodan turned as someone ran into him. It was the young man with neatly combed hair, from the Guardian surplus.
He was following me! Wodan thought, heart racing. He clenched his fist, fully prepared to kill the young man in the middle of the avenue.
“Y-you’re the exile, right?” said the youth. “R-Romana Kyner, right?”
“Wodan! My name’s Wodan!” he shouted, then immediately felt sorry for his curtness. He extended a hand slowly.
The youth did not seem to see his hand. “I’m Darel. I… listen... uh, I heard about you. Listen, man, would it be cool if I got your mailing address?”
“Electronic?” said Wodan, warily.
Darel paused for a long time, then said, “Of course!”
“Do I know you? We have classes together?”
Darel looked around, seemingly distracted. “Uh. Yeah, yeah.”
“With Professor Matri?”
Darel continued looking around.
“Alright,” said Wodan. “Here, let me write it down.”
Darel nodded and left as soon as he had it. “Nice to meet you, too, asshole!” Wodan said when he was sure that Darel was out of earshot.
Confused and angry, Wodan wandered around. He bought a pig-stick from a street vendor, then sat on the edge of a fountain and ate the thing without tasting it, feeling more dejected with each bite. Just as he got up, his mother approached. He tried to force a smile, but failed.
“You’re not having fun?” said his mother.
“Mama,” he said, “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Investigation not going as well as planned?”
“Umph,” he said, looking away. “It’s not that, exactly... I mean, no, it isn’t... but...”
“Well, lookit this,” said his mother, reaching into a bag at her side. She pulled out a small electronic device. She spoke as she turned the thing around in her hands. “You remember how Girardo always talked into a little audio recorder? And anytime he questioned someone, he’d be like, ‘Now, could you say that into the recorder, please?’ And then right near the end of the show, he’d play back something someone had said, just some little inconsequential thing, and then his eyes would light up!, and it’d be that one little thing that helped him solve the mystery.”
Wodan’s anger melted a little with each word.
“And lookit this,” she continued. “Here’s a little plug-in... and a little wire, and you can plug this into your computer... download, upload any kinda audio file you want... see?”
“Oh, Mama...”
“I just picked it up in the area... I thought it might help, I dunno...”
Wodan thought of the families in the Jebediah compound. Mothers, sons. His heart ached to be near his mother, to see her and her small gift. “Oh, Mama! This is perfect!” he said, and hugged her close.
* *
*
Wodan returned to his apartment near the University late that night. He could have stayed with his parents, since the semester was over and he technically had no reason to be near the University. Still, he had to be alone, and his parents did not question that.
He fell on his bed and stared at the ceiling. On a whim he rose, went to his computer, and checked his mail. Amidst a flood of junk mail, he found something utterly strange:
Haven Mail Forum
From: Darel Juniorswerth
To: R. W. Kyner
Subject: I need to see you in person
Peter Remus
Mercule Hermann
Iduna Deira
Salem Jules
Marlon Ziello
Luumis Lamsang
Saul Hargis
Look familiar?
Anything different?
Yours,
Darel
Chapter Six
For the Love of a Whore
Pontius baked in the midday sun and Sellers Square was full of shoppers and dealers fanning themselves in the unending ritual of haggling. Edwar Bruner rode a horse on his two-horse cart. His cart was piled up high with a tarp, a basket large enough to fit several men, and two heavy iron tanks. The sellers in the market eyed him warily, for their territories had already been marked and agreed upon by morning arguments, and they would not easily suffer more competition. Edwar stared ahead and ignored them, his face a mask of determination.
Edwar was a tall man with a high brow, his thin brown hair pushed straight back. He was in his late thirties, with wrinkles hanging about his mouth and across the sides of his large gray eyes. His wrists were thick, his hands large and strong. He wore a rough brown jacket nearly as long as his legs, which dangled near the ground. He made for the center of the square. The crowd parted.
He yanked the reigns of his horse, leaped from the saddle, and jogged to the back of the cart. He grabbed a bunch of tarp in his hands and pulled the entire mass of stuff from the cart in one smooth motion. The iron tanks clattered noisily on the pavement. Some people jumped away, glaring at him.
[Demonworld #2] The Pig Devils Page 9
